


Two Sides to A Coin

by theprydonian_archivist



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-01
Updated: 2008-03-01
Packaged: 2018-07-15 03:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7204874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprydonian_archivist/pseuds/theprydonian_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't know how it happened, only that it did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Sides to A Coin

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Prydonian](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Prydonian). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [The Prydonian collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/theprydonian/profile).

Was it two or three lives? He wasn’t sure. He knew it had gone on for some time. He knew, also, that he had not woken up on day and decided to care. It was simply that he woken up one morning and realized that he did. Maybe it was the understanding that came from knowing each other intimately that sprouted into caring.

He didn’t quite know how it had occurred, as is often the case, he mused. One didn’t often understand the inner mechanics of emotions; one just reaped the bounty as it grew. Not that Time Lords in particular or Gallifreyans in general ever understood love. There were no equations to create it, no block transfer maths to perpetuate it; there was only the strength of knowledge and familiarity by which to water, fertilize and cultivate it into growth.

He had known him as a young man and seen him in his various incarnations. But it was only after watching him fall from the tower that he began to wonder about his own feelings, this overwhelming need to constantly be near his rival, his old friend. It wreaked havoc, this need. He would get close to him and then the rivalry; his own aspirations would wound one or the other of them or both. It was as amusing as it was painful. He concocted a plan to bring himself some glory and it was hued and colored by the fact that he knew the Doctor would turn up to stop him. He didn’t know what he wanted more: the plan or the attempt to stop him. Confusing and frustrating at best, he growled.

It was worse now, he supposed. He wore the body of a young man again, after literally hundreds of years of rotting to the bone. It made him feel young once more. And the Doctor, well, he was a young man. He looked now at the blond hair, the blue eyes, the tall, firm body of an athlete that this incarnation of the Doctor wore like a medal and sighed. After nearly a millennium, here they stood again, men yet boys, old yet young.

These piddling humans with whom the Doctor insisted he travel couldn’t understand the changes in the Time Lord’s mind. They couldn’t know how it as a shock, a blessing and a curse that he was young again in appearance. They couldn’t understand him. Not like he did. They were two sides to the same coin. They traveled in a self-induced exile, each to master their own course, their own direction in life. One to right wrongs, one to level the hand of death; one to be a hero, one to be a villain; one to be a Doctor, and one to be a Master. Every coin had its second side, and they were that to each other.

If he were a romantic, he might say they were called to one another, destined to always cross each other’s path. He wasn’t a romantic, though. And neither was the Doctor, at least not in the non-epic definition. No, he knew that they crossed each other’s paths due to probability and temporal wells, telepathy and a healthy dose of understanding. But it did seem rather an epic wonder how they constantly knew where the other was and what they were up to.

There was love there and he saw it reflected in his rival’s eyes. The blue sparked even as he stood at the controls in the mountain. Regret warred there, fighting for life in the depths of his eyes. As the gas covered him, he felt the stab of pain in his rival’s heart. It was as if he were physically harmed by his actions against him.

As darkness covered his vision, he finally decided. It had been three lives. Oh, and it would be so much more.

Yes, my dear naïve Doctor, he thought, almost painfully, I will live again and oh what meetings we shall have.


End file.
